Lunatic Fringe
by Cadillac Cowboy
Summary: Sometimes dying is the easy way out. A look at the nightmares of exile.


**Author's Note:**

**This is my second work of fan fiction, so as always, reviews and insights are always helpful. I can't thank the group who reviewed my last work enough. Gives me a big smile to hear from authors that I enjoy reading. You guys are great. A minor note, the title of this fic comes froma lyric in "The Last Gunfighter Ballad" by Guy Clark, probably one of the top three folk/bluegrass/country writers of all time.**

**I understand this is probably a bit long for a one-shot, but forgive me if I got a little carried away.**

**As always, I own nothing. Literally.

* * *

**

"Flip card is plus two. Hand sits at 21. You lose," I comment casually.

The man across the table says nothing. He only stares, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, at the result that lies before him. I know that look. I've seen it countless times. He's recounting the various steps that he has taken, trying to figure how, amidst the varying possibilities, it is this one at which he has arrived. And as his gaze rises, from the cards to my own, I can see the fury begin to build. His features change, from shock to anger, from anger to insinuation. I've seen this look before, as well. And I have the outcome rehearsed.

"You cheat! No one sweeps _five _sets in a row! No one!"

"Well, it would appear that someone _has_," I reply tiredly, and begin to carelessly rake his rather large stack of credits in my direction. Not surprisingly, he grasps my wrist and twists it upward, bearing my shoulder onto the table.

"I don't think you heard me, space trash. I said _no one_ sweeps five sets in a row."

He twists my wrist further, bringing my face to the calloused wooden top of the table. This one must mean business.

"My mistake," I grit out. The tension on my arms lessens, but does not cease. I manage to pull my face off the table a few inches, just enough to look at my accuser.

"Perhaps, another set," I ask in my most pleading voice. "To make amends."

Now the tension is gone, and I pull my arm free from his grip. The pain is dull, as it always is, but I hold the wrist as if it has been broken. Theatrics, of course.

"No, I think not," the man booms. "I don't believe in being cheated twice. But I know of other ways you can make amends, and it won't cost me a single chip."

The look in his eye has changed once more. This time to a perverse gleam and a crooked smile. I have seen this look before, and I have no wish to imagine the illicit fantasies that are flashing on the other side of his gaze.

I smile politely, disguising my contempt the way a firaxa disguises its hunger.

"Sorry," I reply. "Not that kinda girl."

He snickers. He begins to move around the table, and as he does, I see that he now holds a blaster in his right hand. Dumb move.

"It wasn't an offer," comes the hushed and sinister response. And with each step he takes, his blaster rises, until he is centimeters from my face and his blaster is jabbing into my midsection. His free hand begins to snake around me, and I can feel the lustful heat from both his breath, and the hand that comes to rest on my backside.

My heart begins to pick up pace, and the blood that is quickly traversing throughout my body begins to sing. This is not combat. But it is the closest thing that this once proud soldier has seen of combat in a long time. He begins to lean his head ever closer to my face, and I realize that the time has come.

With a sudden rush, I shift my weight back into his grasp, then forward bringing my forehead into a collision with his face. I can hear the crunch of bone, and while the dizziness of the blow slows me, it has no doubt rendered my assailant senseless. I slap the blaster away from my body, in time to hear a single bolt explode from the chamber, before the grip on it is lost. I reach into my jacket and grab the hilt of my small vibrodagger and bring it forth with a swipe to his thigh. The blade slashes home and I can hear a muffled scream of pain and cursing. He stumbles back into a chair and then topples to the ground, blood gushing from his face as well as his leg. Without hesitation, I leap on top of him, and bring the dagger to bear at this throat.

The instinct within me says to finish him, not for the sake of his future victims, but because he dared to threaten _me_. I push the remnants of my pride away, back to the dark corners of my mind, and instead stare, cold and piercing, into his eyes. His look is now one of terror and pleading. And at this instance, with my blade resting at his windpipe, I feel pity for him.

"Is this how you wish to die," I ask. "Bleeding on the floor of a lowly cantina, on a scum-ridden rock past the Rim, over a pathetic one hundred credits?"

He has no answer. Only the look of fear that lights one's eyes when death is truly upon them. I know this look _all_ too well.

"I have killed countless thousands of people," I whisper to him. "People who had done and would have done much more for the cosmos than you could ever dream. _Their_ deaths haunt me. _Yours_ will not."

I increase the pressure on the blade a fraction, and I hear his breath catch and watch as his eyes roll back and tears begin to run. It is true; his death will not haunt me. But he is no less alive than they were then, and as such, deserves the chance that I did not allow them to have. I pull the blade from his neck and rise to my feet, wiping the blood across the sleeve of my tattered jacket and replacing my dagger within. I watch him as he scrambles backwards, fear and disbelief etched across his face. When he reaches a distance he feels safe, he quickly scurries to his feet and hurriedly limps through the door of the cantina.

I turn to the table and begin to collect my credits. Depositing them in my jacket pocket, I notice the errant blaster. Looking around, I see only blank stares of patrons and dancers staring back at me in hushed silence. I reach down and retrieve the blaster, casually looking over before sliding it beneath the waistband of my jumpsuit. I slowly walk toward the bar, and the commotion seems to disappear. Music and small conversation pick up, and I am left with the sickly realization of what I have truly become.

* * *

The chips I have won are spent here, as they are at every other stop I make, on spirits to ease my tortured mind. I sat down in the far corner of the bar, where the lights are low and the chatter quiet, and light up a lone cigarra. It's a terrible habit, of that I am certain. But it passes the time.

"Quite a show you put on there, little lady," comes a loud voice from across the bar. I look to see a rather large human with a dirty towel draped over his shoulder staring back at me, grinning.

"Give me something strong," I reply, handing him a handful of credit chips. "And keep them coming."

He complies, bringing me a small tumbler filled with a clear substance. I nod and swallow its contents in a single gulp. It burns down my throat and into the pit of my belly for a few moments and then passes, extinguishing what little fire remained from my little encounter over pazaak.

I set the glass down and he refills it, and the process repeats itself. It is a routine that I've grown accustomed to. A routine I've come to depend on to keep the monsters and memories at bay. We repeat this damned cycle, the bartender and I, and he never leaves the small shadowed corner of the bar. I realize that he wants to talk to me, and it irks the hell out of me that wherever I go, I can never seem to get a quiet drink.

"If you don't mind me askin', where did you learn to fight like that," he finally asks, hushed so that he too won't encourage the wrath that he has seen so personally.

"I didn't realize there was anything special about brawling over a pazaak hand," I reply as I set my glass on the counter.

"True," he remarks, refilling the tumbler. "But I've never seen some one brawl with such quick and fluid motion. Poor junker didn't realize what hit him until he had your blade on him."

"Fought in the war," is my only reply. Quick and to the point, for maybe it will end our little chat.

"The war, eh? I shoulda figured. I fought in a few myself," he beamed, as if the two of us shared some sort of a combat pact. I may be a soldier, but I have little honor of it. "But I never learned moves like that."

"Must've been different wars then."

"Maybe," he says staring toward the cantina floor. "Fought in the Mandalorian. Ground forces," he states, rolling a sleeve up to reveal a Republic insignia tattooed across his bicep. "You?"

"Same here," I return, setting my glass down once more.

"Rough patch that was. I lost of lot good men on those rocks. Lost a lot of good friends, too. Husbands, wives, sons, daughters. 'Specially Malachor. Thousands of men and women screaming, bodies crushed beneath that gravity well. Bodies exploding like their afternoon ration was a frag grenade. Grisly sight. But, all in the name of victory, or so I'm told."

He grows silent, and I can feel the hairs on my neck tingle and rise. My heart slows and alcohol-laced bile begins to creep up my throat. I turn to face him, willing my self to calm down before I empty my stomach across his bar. His eyes blaze with hatred, and he snares onto my arm with an iron grip that I can't wrench myself free from.

"You murdered those men General," he seethes. "You murdered _our_ men."

And in an instant I panic. I try to free myself from him, thrashing and kicking wildly trying to get away. I try to tear my eyes from his burning gaze but my body refuses to cooperate. His eyes, black and desolate, burn into mine and loose everything I have walled up since _that _day. And then I hear them. The screams of soldiers. Screams filled with terror and confusion. I can hear the explosions of blood and bone. I can feel their curses and pleas wash over me through the Force, tearing and gnawing at the very tethers of my soul.

The bartender disappears and I stumble backwards, falling not onto the permacrete of the cantina, but onto the jagged, rocky surface of a place I know all too well. I want to shut my eyes to block out the pain that surrounds me, but my body does not allow it. I see the bodies of my men bloodied and strewn about. But their spirits remain, and in the light of the Malachor's explosions, I can see their ghostly faces, twisted in rage. They move all about me, their screams filling my head until I cannot hear my own mind. They claw and scratch at me, wanting to know why. Why did I mark them to die? Why did I tab them for execution? Why was _I _allowed to live? I have no answers for them, but they do not stop. Until finally, they converge on me and I all I can do is scream in the clutches of a pain that I cannot describe.

"Hey! Hey lady! Snap out of it!"

I awaken in a cold sheet of sweat to find a large set of hands shaking me violently. I thrust them off, falling backwards into a corner, my eyes darting about wildly trying to gauge where I am at and what has happened. I pull the dagger from my coat and bare its blade in front of me, all the while trying to collect both breath and bearings.

"Easy there. Nobody's going to hurt you," comes a familiar voice. It moves into the dim, smoke filled light and I can make out the features of the bartender.

"You passed out at the bar," he says, trying his best to keep his voice calm and soothing, so as not to alarm the drunken lunatic with a vibrodagger he no doubt perceives me to be.

"What h-happened," I stammer, lowering the blade ever so slightly. The view in front of me begins to stop spinning, and I can see this man is absolutely terrified of what I might do.

"You had quite a few drinks," he says. "Quite a few as in about twelve glasses of Tarisian WhiteFire. You passed out in the corner. Hell, I've never seen somebody drink that much. You wouldn't let us stop you..."

He continues to ramble on about his concern for me and my apparent brush with alcohol poisoning. But my mind drowns his voice out, trying to reach back and collect what has just happened. There is nothing there. Nothing tangible to latch onto. Just wisps of fragments of memories. The sound of gunfire. The sight of an explosion. A muffled scream. The dull ache of pain. And then I know. I have remembered _that _day. I have remembered what I did.

I replace my dagger and push myself out of the corner and hurry past the bartender and stumble through the doors of the cantina. I make it only a few feet before ducking behind a corner to empty the contents of my stomach onto the floor of some wretched alleyway. I curse myself repeatedly, before crawling back to my feet. There will be no sleep to speak of on this night. I slowly reemerge from the alley and begin my trek to the small hovel I've resided in for the few weeks I've been on this rock. I reach into my pocket and pull out a single cigarra, light it, and let the acrid burn of smoke fill my nostrils. It's not as potent as strong drink, but it is enough to keep my tattered mind occupied.

* * *

As expected, sleep does not come. It rarely comes anymore. Only moments of darkness and violence. Spasms of choked sobs and restlessness. My mind won't allow me to remember the horrors that haunt my dreams. I reach back for memories, but I can only feel bitterness and pain. I remember small fragments of war; a victory here and a loss there. A repeater blast or the snap-hiss of a lightsaber. I _know_ what I have done, but I cannot _remember_ it. And that is perhaps the worst of all fates.

I am broken in both mind and spirit. I have deadened myself to the Force, to the very nature of existence and my mind has shattered itself in hopes of never reliving the acts that I have perpetrated. I am neither dead, nor am I living. Not in any reasonable sense of the word. So I must drift on. Hoping either to remember or forget, whichever act crosses the threshold of both time and distance faster. Either is better than what I have now.

And so, as the small sun begins to rise on this forsaken planet, I find myself at the spaceport. I have enough credits to hitch a ride with some willing freighter pilot. You'd be amazed where you can go with a pretty smile and a handful of credits. But as I walk along the docking bays, something inside me begins to stir. A strange feeling. Almost as if some part of me that has long been dormant is beginning to wake again. Could it….

"General Reyns," comes a loud baritone voice.

The sound startles me back into reality. It is a name I have not heard in some time. I turn to see two Republic officers coming towards me. I try and turn to walk away, hoping they have mistaken me for someone else. But this feeling inside halts my movements and almost wills me to answer them. I try to fight, but it is too late. Perhaps, it is time that I remember.

"General Reyns," comes a shaky voice, more of a question than a statement. I look up to the see wide eyes of a young man, an ensign. I want to tell him that I am no longer a general. Only the ghost of one, but I know that look in his eye. It is not disdain, but seems to resemble respect.

"Ma'am, we're with the Harbinger. We've got specific orders to escort you back to Republic space."


End file.
